Wisconsin and the Case of the Disappearing Billboards

There's a great report out, produced jointly by One Wisconsin and The Grio, about the mysterious appearance of voter-suppression billboards in "certain neighborhoods" in Wisconsin, especially in Milwaukee, and the equally mysterious "family foundation" that paid for them. The report traces the billboards and the money behind them to the Einhorn Family Foundation. Among his other contributions to the state's political life, Steve Einhorn, the venture capitalist who runs the foundation, contributed $25,000 to the campaign to keep Scott Walker as the state's governor. The report also details how the Einhorn foundation is tied to the Lynne and Harry Bradley Foundation, a longtime conservative sugar-daddy that has funded everything from media "watchdog" sites to the present conservative effort to intimidate "certain" voters so as to suppress "certain" votes. Through their Chicago-based flack, the Einhorns copped to the billboards when cornered by Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel....

"Stephen and Nancy Einhorn placed these billboards as a public service because voter fraud - whether by Republicans or Democrats - undermines our democratic process," said the Einhorns' statement, which was released by the Chicago public relations firm Culloton Strategies. "By reminding people of the possible consequences of illegal voting, we hope to help the upcoming election be decided by legally registered voters."

That would be "certain" legally registered voters, we presume.

Interestingly, the report also traces this latest effort to the ongoing career of obvious anagram Reince Preibus, the Republican national chairman who cut his political teeth by losing a couple of races for the Wisconsin state senate before finding a place in politics where he didn't have to worry about how much voters hated him. It seems that, in his days in Republican A-ball, Priebus developed a certain specialty in this kind of thing....

"When voter suppression allegations have surfaced in Wisconsin for the past decade, the name Reince Priebus has always been close behind," Ross told the Grio. In 2010, Priebus was cited by name, in an aborted voter caging plot targeting minorities and college students involving the Republican Party of Wisconsin, Americans for Prosperity and Wisconsin's Tea Party leaders, including documents that referenced 'billboards' as part of the scheme multiple times." "In 2002, the Wisconsin state Elections Board enacted new guidelines for poll-watchers in response to a Priebus-led racially-charged voter intimidation scheme in Milwaukee," Ross continued. "In 2008, Priebus' Republican Party of Wisconsin sent out an email recruiting volunteers for alleged 'inner city' voter intimidation in Milwaukee. In 2012, it was uncovered Priebus' RNC is behind an anonymous lawsuit intervening in a case involving our unconstitutional voter identification law. That this anti-American garbage is turning up in other states now that Priebus is running the RNC is of no surprise to us in Wisconsin given his career of scheming to deny legal voters their right to the franchise. Americans have always rejected politicians, like Reince Priebus, manipulating the voting system for partisan advantage and they will do it in this case as well."

Clear Channel, having put up the billboards paid for by a then-anonymous group, has taken them down, explaining that the billboards violated Clear Channel's policy against billboards paid for by anonymous groups. Oh.

As Wisconsin seems to have moved in the general direction of becoming a "battleground state," although it's not quite there yet, and given that the state has a hot U.S. Senate race between Tommy Thompson and Tammy Baldwin, the state has managed to make itself central to our national politics again. This means we should all pay attention. I'm telling you, there are thousands of these bush-league finagles going on around the country. It's hard to keep up.

Charles P. PierceCharles P Pierce is the author of four books, mostly recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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